What's Your Favorite Short Story?

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I suppose now is the time to point out that Fred brought up Plath because he's aware that I like her? Even winky faces don't help me anymore, goddamnit!

― Ally, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

It's OK, Ally, we can still agree cause I know that you smoke and don't think that Thom Yorke in red PVC is a total hottie. ;-)

― masonic boom, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

"O winky-face, my winky-face, what hast thou forsaken me?" - Job

(Well, he should have said that.)

― Dan Perry, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

"O winky-face, my winky-face, why hast thou forsaken me?" - Job

(Well, he should have said that.)

― Dan Perry, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

yes, so good that you not only said it for yourself, but then you said it for him! or: so nice, you had to say it twice!

― fred solinger, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I HATE INTERNET EXPLORER BECAUSE IT HELPS ME LOOK LIKE A JACKASS.

― Dan Perry, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I don't know why, but the only short story writers I can think of that have stayed with me / made a sincere impact are "science fiction" writers - Ray Bradbury, Theodore Sturgeon, Harlan Ellison (oh, I loved _Deathbird Stories_), Dan Simmons (who isn't sci-fi - more horror, a la Stephen King, but a MUCH better writer whose novels, unfortunately, have gotten worse & worse & worse), & Clive Barker (novels are cockroach killers, but the short stories - the first three _Books of Blood_ - are the antithesis of Bradbury's fantastic meandering lazy-day prose, and just as good).

The last anthology I can recall reading was John Cheever's collection, which was good, but I think reading it like a novel (straight through) ruined it for me. I also gave _Dubliners_ a shot, but (once again) tried reading it straight through, and got side- swiped.

(Short stories should be used as pallete cleansers during the reading of a novel, I think - referring back to Fred's original query, they (short stories) could be like the ambient noise / segue track on an album, bridging two sections, allowing the reader a chance to pause & reflect.) (Or they could serve as EPs - a sampling of an author's work that's substantial, but not too weighty. Someone mentioned this already, right?)

― David Raposa, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Someone mentioned Phillip K. Dick - who I used to enjoy reading a lot. Usually he's labeled a "writer's writer" meaning that he's good to read for the ideas in the stories, but he's actually kind of a poor writer much of the time in terms of story craft. I stopped reading him as much when I was less interested in the ideas, because the writing wasn't good enough. Would probably still be good to read in small doses though.

― Josh, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I have read Tolstoy's short stories. One is about a man in the back of a sleigh on an overnight trip to another town, waking up and falling asleep and losing the way and being guided back, it's about 80 pages long.

― Maryann, Friday, 15 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

'Kitchen' by Banana Yoshimoto: absolutely wonderful. More of a novella than a short story, but it's beautiful.

Oh, and I'm reading Phillip K. Dick at the moment...

― Paul Strange, Friday, 15 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Christ I was worried we weren't going to get any Dick. Carver is great too.

Favourite short story though is "The Prize Of Peril" by Robert Sheckley. Indeed most of Sheckley's stuff is a good science fiction laugh riot. The short story after all is the home of the half assed Sci-fi idea.

― Pete, Friday, 15 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Christ I was worried we weren't going to get any Dick.

Insert punchline here.

― Dan Perry, Friday, 15 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

That Would be Up the Butt, Bob!!

* crickets, tumbleweed, etc *

― mark s, Friday, 15 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I'll throw my hoop onto the Dick. S'funny, two genre that I stay away from in the novel form are SF and Fantasy. When it comes to short stories though I don't mind a bit of PK Dick, JG Ballard (SF) and Angela Carter (fantasy).

Carter's 'The Bloody Chamber' collection has been an old, old fave of mine. JG Ballard's 'The Garden of Time' is probably my favourite short story ever. Poetic and heartbreaking.

― DavidM, Saturday, 16 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Canucks are so fucking great at this genre, no one is better then canadian short story writers :

Mavis Gallant - in transit (book)
Sinclair Ross- lamp at noon
WG Valgardson- bloodflowers, god is not a fish inspector,celebration
Alice Munro - lives of girls and women (book)
Thomas King- borders
Margaret Atwood - birth

― anthony, Sunday, 17 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

"The Cask of Amontillado" - Poe. Which reminds me...

― Joe, Tuesday, 19 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

one month passes...

Thank God someone finally mentioned Poe. Ally, if you are looking for psychological worth in a short story, you need to look no further. While I agree with you that a novel is a greater forum to convey a deep message, it is completely unfair to discount the medium of story-writing altogether. You mentioned earlier a disdain for the lack of detail provided in the short format. What is so great about a short story is the necessity for detail. It seems EVERY WORD of Poe's in "Cask" has been carefully selected and put in place, creating a very tightly-wrapped narrative that would be nearly impossible for even the finest of writers to sustain for a few hundred pages. The details that are omitted are carefully done, as well, leaving room for analysis of Montresor, and a speculation as to the motives behind the writing of this tale. In this regard, having some things unresolved can increase the value of a short story, unlike many novels that come off as manifestos, for the amount of pounding away at their thesis the authors do. Also, the short story format can be attributed to the proliferation of experimental fiction. Imagine the critical appeal of a drawn-out version of Kafka's "Metmorphosis" at first publication. What wouldn't be plucked from a bookshelf can be published in a magazine. Kafka made more noise turning Gregor Samsa into a bug for sixty pages than he would have for 300. John Barth pokes fun at how formulaic novels can be by tearing down Frietag's triangle. Jorge Luis Borges packs more philosophical punch into "Garden of Forking Paths" than most novels I've read. In defense of Salinger: I'm in college now and still appreciate _Catcher in the Rye_. I don't think this was self-indulgent teen angst speaking out. What made Holden Cauffield so different from those whiny WASPs with curfew problems to turn to death metal, was the sincerity of his struggle. He didn't consciously create any of his own problems as a way of showing them off to other people. He didn't want to rebell against any authority, he just wanted understanding. This book is so important because it was written with the maturity of an adult author, but without patronizing its target audience. Holden's struggle through his disillusion shows very strong moral character and innocent ideals. Holden was no needlessly rebellious teen, he was a dreamer sickened with imperfection, disgusted by its corruption of his older brother, and horribly fearful of the inevitability of harming his younger sister. This is one of the greatest novels I've ever read, and while it is aimed at a high school audience, it would be a tragedy if it was left there.

― Zach Richer, Wednesday, 1 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

joyce's "the dead" is the only one.

but hemingway's "the short happy life of francis macomber" is good too.

― sundar subramanian, Wednesday, 1 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Vollman -- "Bad Air" from The Atlas. One of the most brilliant things written, ever. But then Vollmann has many good short stories, including one involving Gun City. The opening pages of "The Happiest Day Of My Life" are similarly brilliant, from Thirteen Stories and Thirteen Epitaths. Carver is always good for a giggle. Mailer's little meta-fictional number in Advertisements For Myself is good. Also, the mobeius story by Barth.

― Sterling Clover, Wednesday, 1 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

PKD = not good writer argument = bollocks (with all due respect).

And yes, he wrote my favourite short story of which I typically forgot the title. It's about a boy and girl who at night watch angels descent on sacrificial blood (something like that). Anyway, something goes terribly wrong, so there's a beautiful passage about dimensional travelling. When we're back the boy (I think) walks around and starts noticing that people around him are changing into the girl, and I mean everybody! The story ends with him in a room looking into the mirror and seeing a girl asking "where are you?'.

― Omar, Thursday, 2 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Yeah Omar I remember that story, it is great!
But i can't remember the name of it either .

― duane, Thursday, 2 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Great Duane, somebody finally knows what I'm talking about, should see people's faces when you try to tell them about this story ;)

Two other personal favourites are by JG Ballard (from War Fever).

1) The Greatest Theme Park in the World, about tourists on the Mediterranean who refuse to go back to their home countries/work, basically get obsessed with their bodies, begin a fascistic body/sun cult and end up invading the northern countries. All told at an amazing pace btw. not a word wasted.

2) the other one I forget the title of again ;) It's about some astronauts who discover a space-ship and start to walk around, every time the spaceship seems to grow, so every time they give an estimate how big it is supposed to be, at the end it's as big as the universe. Freaky tale.

― Omar, Thursday, 2 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

ooh, i forgot to mention william trevor. it's not joyce but what is? a bit less ironic and detached, a little more plot-heavy and sentimental. great wrist-slicing irish stuff. some favourites: "music," "o fat white woman."

― sundar subramanian, Thursday, 2 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Another great one that comes to mind is "The Lagoon", I think it was Joseph Conrad. An ingenious tale.

― Joe, Friday, 3 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

The Mavis Gallant one about a husband dying in the south of france and his wife falling in love with an expat. Not tragic or seemly, just human.

― anthony, Friday, 3 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

hey omar that PKD story is called "Upon The Dull Earth" if I remember correct.

― duane, Friday, 3 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

[walks to bookshelf] Yeah you're right, now I would never have guessed that was the title. Must reread that story today.

― Omar, Friday, 3 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Wodehouse. That is all.

― Sam, Friday, 3 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

three months pass...

My fave short story would have to be The Lottery... But I have a big question to ask anybody who has read W.D. Valgardson's BLOODFLOWERS. I HATE this short story. PLEASE, SOMEBODY tell me something - anything - about this story concerning theme, symbolism, characters ... I have an ISU on it and I just can't find anything.

― Melody, Sunday, 25 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Right now I'm dipping in and out of The Avram Davidson Treasury and he kicks most everyone's ass right now in terms of short stories, I am again realizing. An ear for the spoken word, the mind of a polymath, a deep student of ethics and the human heart and astounding humor -- put 'em all together and that's Davidson right there for ya.

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 25 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Hmm, Teddy, A Perfect Day for Bananafish or, most importantly, Franny by Salinger. I love Salinger.

― Samantha, Wednesday, 28 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

six months pass...

I'd rather read a really good novel, as a really good short story leaves me a bit unsatisfied and wishing for more. I like short story novrlas, and two of my favorites are Dostoevesky's "Notes From Undergrund", and "The Gambler". I write short stories so that I can win prize money in short story competitions. They're a quick write for the lazy writer in us.

― Dale A., Monday, 17 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link

I like Wodehouse too, and a story by Paul Bowles called 'A Distant Voice' (I think), Edna O'Brien, Edgar Allen Poe's detective stories but not his horror stories, lots of detective stories - ie Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Patricia Highsmith, Dashiel Hammett, etc. Short stories as in 'slice of life' qua Chekhov I don't really dig too much, and when romance novelists do short stories I don't really like them either. Detective stories work well and probably sci fi, though I haven't read any I really liked for ages except for these really corny ones based on the cheesiest maths problems like schrodingers cat and so on.

Q: is it ok to use 'dig' in written conv. if you would not in spoken?

― maryann, Tuesday, 18 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link

well you don't want to be a speech fascist do you?

― Josh, Tuesday, 18 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link

Are you one? Because that would definitely influence my answer.

― maryann, Tuesday, 18 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link

Nobody mentioned Beckett yet? "Dante & The Lobster" is great, and "Yellow" gets better with every reading (the apotheosis of the bad joke down to the atomic level etc). & "Dubliners" is classic for probably the right reasons.
Borges - a lot of people forget "The South", which is so . . . unassumingly elegant & perfect (& his note to the story is sublimely accurate & v.funny), "Death & The Compass" for being the best (meta-) detective story ever.
Mishima's "Patriotism" is one of the best (& sexiest) short stories ever - nearly all the stuff from "Death In Midsummer" & "Acts Of Worship" is great ("Onnagata" esp). Murakami's "The Elephant Vanishes" is great, too - the one story about sleeplessness?
In terms of the (vaguely perjorative) "ideas fiction" or "writers for writers" (heh) - lots of cyberpunk kidzors (+PKD) are fun & work really well in the medium of the short story.
& John Dolan's "T-Shirts Against Me" is the funniest thing ever.

― Ess Kay, Tuesday, 18 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link

dante and the lobster rocks. "it is not". yeah.

― toby, Tuesday, 18 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link

I'm not saying that I prefer it to Borges, Joyce, Dick, Carver, Wodehouse, Calvino, Barthelme, Hemingway, Kafka and Chekhov, for instance, but I today finished The Burn by James Kelman, which was terrific and far more varied than he was generally given credit for. Some other great short story writer: Updike, Fitzgerald, Patrick White, Kemal, Primo Levi, Joyce Carol Oates, Maupassant, Lem, Delany, Akutagawa, John Barth's Lost In The Funhouse, Coover, Cordwainer Smith. And how has no one mentioned Damon Knight's classic, even paradigmatic short-short, To Serve Man?

― Martin Skidmore, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link

Joyce Carol Oates = my creative writing teacher

― Dave M., Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link

damn. that was supposed to have fake HTML tags around it that said "bragging" and "/bragging".

― Dave M., Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link

one year passes...

the title story of zz packer's drinking coffee elsewhere is pretty great. anyone else read this collection?

― etc, Saturday, 12 June 2004 21:20 (nineteen years ago) link

I think ILB might have done a reading group on her! I read one story from it in Zembla, it was nicely written but not really inspired, i dunno.

― Gregory Henry (Gregory Henry), Saturday, 12 June 2004 21:24 (nineteen years ago) link

I'll take a look (haha tho I don't know most of the ILB posters & therefore don't know who I should trust &c). yeah, wasn't "inspired", but I had a sortuv nabiscothing's-reaction-to-white teeth to it, & it was nice to take a holiday from the sort of post-borges/kafka stuff I usually end up w/.

― etc, Saturday, 12 June 2004 21:46 (nineteen years ago) link

Kate is after my heart, disliking Salinger. Nonsense that should be left behind with your high school days.

most of the good things in the world = nonsense that should be left behind with our high school days. it's all downhill from there, i've decided.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Saturday, 12 June 2004 22:07 (nineteen years ago) link

My favourite short stories are the ones in Alasdair Gray's "Unlikely Stories Mostly" which I think were mentioned by Norman Fay upthread.

― dog latin (dog latin), Saturday, 12 June 2004 23:40 (nineteen years ago) link

"Descending" by Thomas Disch. For that matter, everything in Fundamental Disch is ace.
Delany's "Aye, and Gomorrah" is pretty great, too.

― Rock Hardy (Rock Hardy), Sunday, 13 June 2004 00:13 (nineteen years ago) link

I read "descending" when I was nine & it creeped me the fuck out (as did pkd's "the electric ant")

― etc, Sunday, 13 June 2004 00:22 (nineteen years ago) link

i mostly prefer Novellas - Carver is my favourite but has been mentioned a lot upthread (Catherdral Fat and Bridle are my favourites). Does "Bartelby the Scrivener" count? its probably a novella, either way its one of the greatest things ever written by anyone.

― jed_ (jed), Sunday, 13 June 2004 00:40 (nineteen years ago) link

i love short stories. "you're ugly, too" by lorrie moore is great. all the george saunders stuff mentioned above is very good, too.

― mandee, Sunday, 13 June 2004 01:57 (nineteen years ago) link

two years pass...

stolen shamelessy from slashdot:

short stories in six words:
http://blog.wired.com/sixwords/

most seem to have a Twilight Zone quality:

I’m dead. I’ve missed you. Kiss...?
- Neil Gaiman

― Koogy Yonderboy (koogs), Thursday, 26 October 2006 10:09 (seventeen years ago) link

Skipping 90 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

"The Watchful Poker Chip" is brilliant. Bradbury's "The Lake" (the first story he ever published) is one of those stories that just kicks me in the gut every time I read it.

A recent favorite is Tove Jansson's "The Golden Calf," one of her stories involving humans, specifically childhood religious obsession.

Others:
Shirley Jackson - "The Summer People" (much quieter and more terrifying than "The Lottery")
James Thurber - "The Night the Bed Fell"
A bunch of Saki - "Sredni Vashtar" is the one that sticks most in my mind, though it's a complete outlier
Flannery O'Connor - A Good Man is Hard to Find
the story in "Homer Price" about the doughnuts

― clotpoll, Sunday, 25 March 2007 05:36 (seventeen years ago) link

Hello Homer Price fan, may I platonically hold your hand?

― Abbott, Sunday, 25 March 2007 06:11 (seventeen years ago) link

'Sredni Vashtar' is (with reason) his most famous, but his vignettes of hypocritical Edwardian society are just as delicious.

― unfished business, Sunday, 25 March 2007 13:20 (seventeen years ago) link

is "Turn of the Screw" really a short story? I don't think it's overrated, though; I think it's usually regarded as kind of anomalous in his body of work. I like it a lot.

― horseshoe, Sunday, 25 March 2007 17:11 (seventeen years ago) link

Many of my favorites have already been mentioned so I'll just add, "The Other Side of the Hedge" by E.M. Forster. Actually, I really like all of the stories in The Celestial Omnibus.

― ENBB, Sunday, 25 March 2007 17:42 (seventeen years ago) link

oh, i was kidding about me loving my own stories, btw....

― homosexual II, Sunday, 25 March 2007 22:49 (seventeen years ago) link

Where is the love for Elizbath Bowen's "Mysterious Kôr," which some people think is the story about London during the blitz?

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Monday, 26 March 2007 00:53 (seventeen years ago) link

I'm surprised no one has pointed out how awesome Hawthorne's "Wakefield" is yet.

― Hurting 2, Monday, 26 March 2007 02:34 (seventeen years ago) link

Oh yeah, forgot about that one.

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Monday, 26 March 2007 02:37 (seventeen years ago) link

eight months pass...

Does anybody have any favorite short story collections?

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Thursday, 20 December 2007 23:47 (sixteen years ago) link

Andre Dubus - either the big-ass collected stories or We Don't Live Here Anymore

― milo z, Thursday, 20 December 2007 23:52 (sixteen years ago) link

Drat. If this were ILM I could edit my own posts to fix that.

-- Josh, Wednesday, June 13, 2001 7:00 PM (6 years ago) Bookmark Link

?!?!

― jaymc, Thursday, 20 December 2007 23:54 (sixteen years ago) link

I wonder how Josh is doing. These days he just writes about people he meets on the bus.

― jaymc, Thursday, 20 December 2007 23:55 (sixteen years ago) link

Does anybody have any favorite short story collections?

You mean collected short stories of one author, or anthologies?

― franny glass, Friday, 21 December 2007 00:07 (sixteen years ago) link

J: I assume that's because he had mod powers on ILM, but not ILE

― nabisco, Friday, 21 December 2007 00:09 (sixteen years ago) link

You mean collected short stories of one author, or anthologies?

-- franny glass, Friday, December 21, 2007 12:07 AM

The former is what I had in mind.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Friday, 21 December 2007 04:47 (sixteen years ago) link

But of course I won't turn down the latter.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Friday, 21 December 2007 04:48 (sixteen years ago) link

I was going to mention "Fundamental Disch" but then I saw that I already did on this thread.

― Rock Hardy, Friday, 21 December 2007 04:55 (sixteen years ago) link

The Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories, edited by Malcolm Bradbury.

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Friday, 21 December 2007 04:57 (sixteen years ago) link

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